What Are Budget Categories?

Tracking your campaign finances and their source is an important part of any campaign. In ISP, Budget Categories are a great way to understanding where transactions occur and how they play a role in your committee’s finances. Transactions affected by this include both Expenses and Contributions.

Under the Lists tab, select Budget Categories. On the resulting screen will be a list of Budget Categories already existing in your database. You can choose to view all Active, Inactive, or All Budget Categories.

To the left of each budget category is a red X that allows you to remove the Budget Category from the list. If it is in use (i.e. at least one transaction has that Budget Category selected), it will instead be made Inactive so it no longer appears in your list of Budget Category options when creating a transaction.

To the right is a hot dog menu with an option to Merge any budget categories that are duplicates of each other.

You can also click on each Budget Category to edit the name and which Parent Category it belongs to. Parent Categories are more global in purpose and can cover multiple similar Budget Categories. For example, you could have an Administrative Parent Category with Budget Categories such as Bookkeeping or Bank Fees linked to the Parent Category.

At the bottom of the screen are other actions you can take.

This will print the list of budget categories to a PDF.

If you handle multiple accounts, you can import in specific budget categories from that account into another. In the window that appears, choose the Category (or Categories), then click Import Budget Categories.

This will remove any categories that have not been used yet, allowing you to keep your list uncluttered.

This is another tool to help keep your list free from categories that are no longer in use. Clicking this will move Active categories that have not been used in a while over to the Inactive designation and list.